Week 4: The concept of liberty

Essay question

Is there a single concept of liberty underpinning the many ways in which the term is used by political thinkers?

Key readings

• Isaiah Berlin, Two concepts of liberty, in Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, ch. 1.
• Gerald MacCallum, Negative and positive freedom, The Philosophical Review, vol. 76, no. 3 (July, 1967), pp. 312-334.
• David Miller, Introduction, in David Miller (ed.), Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. .

Further reading

• Tim Gray, Freedom, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1990.
• T.H. Green, Liberal legislation and freedom of contract, in R. L. Nettleship (ed.), Works of T. H. Green, vol 2, London: Longmans Green, 1888.
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651, ch. 21.
• Philip Pettit, Republican freedom and contestatory democracy, in Ian Shapiro & Casiano Hacker-Cordón (eds.), Democracy's Value, 1999.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762, bk. 1, chs. 6-8.
• Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, esp. ch. 2.
• Hillel Steiner, Individual liberty, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 75 (1974-1975), pp. 33-50.
• Charles Taylor, What’s wrong with negative liberty, in Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, ch.
• Jeremy Waldron, Homelessness and the issue of freedom, in Liberal Rights: Collected Papers, 1981-1991, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, ch. 13.

Exam questions

• Is liberty primarily about the absence of law or the authorship of law?
• How (if at all) do economic circumstances affect an individual’s liberty?
• ‘Freedom has only instrumental value: freedoms that do not promote autonomy have no normative value.’ Discuss.
• Do threats limit an individual’s freedom?